Attendance:Catherine Axinn, Pat Beamish, Josephine Bloomfield, Duncan Brown, AngieBukley, Carolyn Cardenas, Lee Cibrowski, Donna Conaty, John Day, GlennDoston, David Drabold, Judith Edinger, Jason Hartz, Peter Johnson, HansKruse, Christine Mattley, Mark Mecum, David Mould, Michael Mumper,Chester Pach, Animesh Rathore, Josep Rota, Susan Sarnoff, KatherineTadlock, Maureen Weissenrieder, Yingjiao Xu, and Julia Zimmerman
Excused: David Juedes and Robert Roe.
Guests: Kathy Krendl and Valerie Young.
Convened: The meeting was convened at 2:05 pm.
1. Remarks by Provost Kathy Krendl:
TheProvost said that the document sent to her, ‘The role of GraduateCouncil in a post “Vision Ohio” University’ is an important documentbecause we need a strong voice in favor of graduate education at OhioUniversity. She said this is the time to look at what we had, where we would like to be and the structure at other institutions. Chesternoted that Michael had conducted a study to look at the structure ofthe Graduate College or the comparable administrative body at otherschools. Provost Krendl said that the few thingsthat have come up through the symposia of the various implementationteams is that it is not a good idea to impose a huge bureaucracybecause it gets to be too expensive and sometimes does not functionwell in the long run and that the primary interest is to furthergraduate study and find a strong voice for graduate students. She said that we need a more visible body as an advocate for graduate education.
Susannoted that most faculty have responded to this based on the informationpresented in the media that indicates that Ohio University willconsider having a Graduate College. She asked if we could achieve the same goals and fulfill the responsibilities using the current organizational structure. She said that faculty are concerned about the process used to designate faculty as Graduate faculty. Josie said that EPSA (Education Policy and Student Affairs Committee) is responsible for that designation. Provost Krendl said that we do not have that strong voice that speaks in favor of advancing graduate study. Some departments have graduate faculty, whereas some do not. Susan added that that is a matter of concern because it seems like faculty are being separated from each other. Also, that all departments will have to work with one dean for undergraduate affairs and with another one for graduate affairs. In New York, most universities do not have a Graduate College, but in Ohio it seems to be a popular choice. Provost Krendl responded saying that all of our 10 aspirational peers have it. And, according to CGS (Council of Graduate Schools) the trend is to have a Graduate College to support graduate education. We need a focal point, she added. We need an advocate for gradate study and a clear mission for that body. Susansaid that most of our students are undergraduates and that since we donot have that many graduate programs; we do not have a body like that. Perhaps, if we increased the number of our graduate programs, it would warrant having a Graduate College. TheProvost responded saying that we want to increase graduate enrollment(on this campus, on the regional campuses and at the learning centers)and having a structure like this will facilitate that. She said we need a focal point; we need a mission for graduate study.
Peter asked about the budgetary implications of having a Graduate College. He said that this probably cannot be a cost-neutral venture; hence would it be feasible in these lean economic times. He also asked about the change to semesters. Provost Krendl said that moving to semesters will be advantageous in many respects. There are many logistical, practical, and pedagogical reasons to support that shift she added. She said that faculty have repeatedly complained that it is hard to find text books for quarters. Also, articulation and transfer agreements are easy to accomplish with the semester system. She added that the 2+2 transfers also work out easier in a semester system. Anotherreason, she said is conducting joint programs does not work out withother institutions, because our calendar does not match up with any ofthose institutions. She noted that some facultydo not have the requirement for a seminar paper for their students atthe end of the quarter because there just isn’t enough time to do a bigseminar paper in a quarter. She further saidthat most of the new hires, the younger faculty are primarily from asemester system and they prefer that over the quarter system. Also, having a long summer break in the semester facilitates faculty research and travel. And that the transfer costs will be one-time costs only. Shesaid that Josie’s team has calculated that for less than $100,000 ayear, we can transfer the existing structure to that of a GraduateCollege.
Maureen noted that she is worried that these proposals might suffer the same fate as that of the General Education. She said that people are supportive when it comes to principles, but problems arise when details are worked on. Also, at some level faculty feel that the fait accompli nature of the situation is not very helpful. Michaelsaid that it has been a rather complicated situation, because when aproposal is brought forward, people say that it was brought forwardwithout adequate discussion. And, when there isan opportunity for discussion people feel that it is hard to discussthe situation, not knowing what the outcome is going to be. Maureen agreed saying that it is sort of a catch 22 situation. Also, she said that she is concerned that people are not speaking up. Provost Krendl asked Josie if the debates were well attended. Josie said they were and that they were good debates. She said that we have the office of Graduate Studies, but that office really does not have power for advocacy. She added that most problems that surface in graduate education arise due to the lack of advocacy. Duncan said that in one of the reports of EPSA it was said that graduate education did not require any advocacy. Provost Krendl said that in the foundation board meeting in November, no one raised the issue of graduate education. Deans made presentations about their top priorities. There were many proposals, but none of the Deans took ownership of the cause of graduate education as their own. Shesaid that she is sorry to have to say this in the presence of graduatestudents, but unfortunately graduate education did not rise to thelevel of top priority for any one of the academic units. Shesaid that she thinks that the reason is that people are consumed bynumbers and that numbers are in undergraduate education here, so thatgets most attention. She noted that we need a seat at the table for graduate education. And, that seat is not symbolic; it needs to be a strong voice. She added that we will not get the focus on graduate education without the structure. And,that if we have a Graduate College the two functions that will betransferred to them are the graduation checks and dissertation approval. She is looking for strong voices and that we need to be more effective in having clarity about goals for graduate education. Shesaid that she has been here for ten years and has noticed that we donot have that consistent sense of mission or focus on graduateeducation. This does not help us as an institution. Wehave some great graduate programs, but they get lost in the shufflebecause there is no one here constantly thinking about opportunities ofbuilding on these strengths. Provost Krendl saidthat in her mind the decision about having a Graduate College was nevera fait accompli, she was looking for an informed discussion on theissue.
Duncansaid that he started out skeptical about having a Graduate College, buthe agrees that we do not have strong advocacy for graduate students. Atthe time of the decision to raze Mill Street apartments to the ground,there was no one he said who spoke up to say that demolition of thoseapartments will also cause that international community of graduatestudents to perish. That was a turning point for him, he added. ProvostKrendl said that the Wolfe Street apartments are for graduate students,but in the master plan for the campus, there is another plan for thatsite. She brought up that issue at a meetingwith graduate students and one of them asked why they should worryabout graduate student housing. She said that itstruck her as odd and that we need to have prominently displayed andeasily accessible graduate student housing on this campus. Susan said that she agrees that we need advocacy for graduate education. She added that she is not sure if having a Graduate College and a strong advocacy for graduate education go hand in hand. Shesaid that she would defer that to the colleagues who have examined thestructure at peer institutions, to see if there are other options. Duncansaid that in the past year, the initiatives that we have taken forgraduate education, namely the establishment of an internationalrecruitment fund, or having base money (versus having one-time onlymoney) and increasing the number and amount of Named Fellowships coulduse more advocacy. He said that he sends an email to the Provost, and that is about all we can do.
ProvostKrendl said that she is waiting for the teams to send her theirrecommendations, but she said that she is expecting recommendationsabout increasing the amount of graduate stipend, increasing the numberof graduate stipends awarded, and some recommendations regarding thehealth insurance. She said that she has consistently heard from faculty that our stipends are not competitive enough. She said that she believes that we would be a better institution if we had a better mix of graduate and undergraduate students. Shesaid that we need some mechanism for a stronger voice to give her theammunition in terms of recommendations to move money around forinitiatives that we want to pursue. Michael added that with advocacy they also need the voice to address the broad scope of graduate education. Deansof Colleges have the advancement of their graduate programs as theirgoals, but there is no single voice that would focus on furtheringgraduate education. Provost Krendl agreed saying, we do not have university wide policies for many issues, like plagiarism. This year it has risen to a high priority level, it has become sort of a crisis. She said that many institutions have that and we are looking at other schools to see how they accomplish that. She said that if we do not have these university wide policies in place, we will always be reacting to situations. Susansaid that this discussion is very helpful and wished that it had beforethe EPSA meeting, so she could have informed that group about it.
Duncan said that we spend a lot of time discussing operational issues and making those decisions. He added that now with the two tier process of reviewing Conflict of Interest cases, it will free up some time every month. Duncan added that we need to be able to work on both strategic issues and day-to-day issues. He said that we have only one program review to address for the next meeting. ProvostKrendl asked whether Graduate Council serves as an advocate forgraduate education to the Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, orthe members feel like they represent their departments. She asked about the scope of responsibility of Graduate Council. Catherine responded saying she sees her role as broad to encompass all graduate programs not just the ones in her College. Maureen said that graduate education is very complex and programs differ significantly. We are all invested in the quality of graduate education. Duncanused the example of the new proposal for granting posthumous degrees todraw attention to the variance in our degree programs.
Provost Krendl said that the Graduate Education Research Board will identify priorities for interdisciplinary research. Also, she added that she did not think it would be appropriate for Graduate Council to rank order our graduate programs. She said the administration is under pressure from the Ohio Board of Regents to generate that list. They require a credible internal review process to evaluate our graduate programs on a rank order basis. Michaelsaid that the discussions at GERB have focused on facilitating our‘very good’ graduate programs to nationally prominent graduate programs. ProvostKrendl added that this involves looking down the road to seek timelyfunding, assess market demand, and designate funding in those areas. She said that it did not seem to be consistent with the charge of this body. If this group becomes the advocacy group, then they can support those initiatives. Chestersaid that we just need to be careful of the agendas for these bodiesthat we establish and that they are not antagonistic to each other. He added that we need to focus on making Graduate Council a more effective instrument for advocacy of graduate education. He said that most of the business that we deal with comes to us. We have not been able to be pro-active as we would have liked to be. Duncansaid that in the survey about the graduate schools in otherinstitutions, they found a body similar to that of Graduate Council,sometimes chaired by a faculty member, sometimes by the Dean. But, there always was something similar to this body.
ProvostKrendl said that NRC (National Research Council) will do the ranking ofthe programs and that we are not organized the way other schools are. We have to be where our competition is. She said that when she was the Dean of the College of Communication, she came across this issue. Thenational body was not sure who to send the ranking materials to—theDean of the College, the Provost, or to the VP for Research. Duncan said that OU used to be a member of a national body on academic integrity. One person used to attend the national conference every year. Due to budget cuts, that membership lapsed and no one from OU attends that conference any more. This came out through a study conducted by a Master’s student from Communication Studies. Josiesaid that this is a good example of lack of advocacy, when the budgetcut took away the membership; there were no advocates for retainingthat membership. Duncan said that anotherexample he can think of is the issue that some graduate students end uphaving most of their course work in terms of only cross-listed courses. There is dissatisfaction about it, as we know from the survey Mark brought to us. He added that all he could do was send an email to the Provost to express that. Shesaid that she does read all the emails and this just proves that thereis consistently a demand for more advocacy for graduate education andissues pertaining to it. Provost Krendl’s concluding remarks echoed the sentiments she expressed earlier. She would like to see a strong voice in favor of keeping graduate education in the forefront for planning for the institution.
2. Approval of April Minutes:
Minutes of the April 14th, 2006 meeting were approved.
3. Chair’s Report (Duncan Brown):
A. June 2nd meeting: Duncan reminded members that the June meeting will be on the 2nd not on the 9th, due to graduate commencement. Also,the meeting is from 3 to 5 pm instead of 2 to 4 pm to accommodatemembers who will be attending the UIC meeting from 1 to 3 pm.
B. Graduate Council Committee descriptions:Duncan said that he has not sent out descriptions of the charges of thecommittees because he had received only from two and they are from lastfall and last winter. He proposed having adiscussion to this effect in the next meeting and until then urgedcommittee chairs to initiate discussion via email with their committeemembers. Cathy said that it might be better to think about committee structure after we discuss our mission. Ifwe discuss committee responsibilities now, we might end up describingwhat we are doing now versus what we could and should be doing. Maureen added that we also should plan on having some processes in place to facilitate other voices coming to us. Also, we should communicate agenda items and important issues with other units on campus. Duncan said that sometimes it feels like that we are invisible and it is hard to explain to people who we are and what we do. Maureen said that college representatives can bring issues for discussion to Graduate Council. Continuingin the same vein of openness Susan noted that Faculty Senate used tohave open meetings where non-members could attend. She said that we could try doing something similar here. Mark asked if Graduate Council could operate more as a Senate and thus receive reports from all the Colleges.
Carolyn said that we could possibly include graduate chairs in this discussion. We have constituents, but we do not use them. Communication has to occur both ways. She added that a few days after the meeting, an email can be sent to cover issues discussed. It does not need to have the details of the operational aspects, but should cover important issues. Duncan said that in Faculty Senate, membership is based on faculty representation. Membership of Graduate Council is a little more complex. Thereare three groups: Faculty (appointed by the committee on committee ofFaculty Senate), administrators (representing all colleges, libraries,international studies, and graduate studies), and Students (fromGraduate Student Senate). Chester noted that he likes the idea of Faculty Senate sending an email about agenda items to solicit opinions. Duncanagreed, saying that the discussion about posthumous degrees is a goodexample where we could have used specific information from graduatechairs. Angie said that after every meeting, she sends pertinent information to graduate chairs. Chris noted that Maureen does the same as well.
4. Remarks by Michael Mumper:
A. Graduate Resources Implementation Team:Josie informed Graduate Council that the focus of discussion has beenthe new assessment and budget process, specifically its implicationstowards a larger stipend amount or lesser fees. Also, there has been discussion about the metrics to be used for measuring and assessing our policy and procedures.
B. New Health Insurance Plan for Graduate Students: Mark informed members about the new plan that Ohio University has adopted for health insurance. The current plan is expiring this summer and the university had three plans to pick one from. Graduate Student Senate and International Student Union endorsed the same option. Accordingto this plan, all students are in the same pool, versus two differentones (domestic and international) in the previous plan. Having all students in the same pool facilitated the lower cost than that of the current international plan.
Domestic students will now pay a little more than they used to and international students will pay less than they used to. The new plan will cost $1100, the deductible is $50 and the co-pay will be $25. The cost is now higher for domestic students. He added that OU was the only school that had two different plans for domestic and international students. David asked about the plans costs for spouses and children. Mark said that it has decreased some, but not by a significant amount. Judith asked if there was a network of providers in the state for the new plan. She said that medical students only spend their first two years in Athens. After that, they are involved in practicum training, which can be anywhere in the state. Mark said that the same company has furnished the new plan, so there should not be any problem finding providers in the state. In response to Carolyn’s question about the cost increase for domestic students, Mark said that it would be $100 more.
C. Graduate Education and Research Board: Cathy presented an update about the GERB. She said that requests for proposals will be sent out shortly. The proposals are not due until September or even October. The proposals can be in the form of a letter of intent by faculty, but they need to be endorsed by the Dean of the College. Chester asked about the amount that can be requested. Michael said that the amount can be expressed as a range and that each College needs to set its own priorities. Cathy said that for this activity to be meaningful, a significant amount will be required for each proposal. She felt that half of the proposals will probably not get funded. Thisis due to the fact that if a program needs to be moved from a ‘verygood’ one to a nationally prominent one, it cannot be accomplished in$20,000. David asked about an external review of the proposals received. Cathy said that the review process is embedded in the middle and that they do not want this exercise to take too much time.
5. Admissions Requirements Committee (Josie Bloomfield):
Josie informed Graduate Council that the two conflict of interest reviews in the packet today have been seen by members before. The difference now is that they both now have a new advisor, Dr. Alam. Dr.Alam’s appointment is in Mechanical Engineering, but his area ofspecialization and research are similar to Bruce Brown and MarcSinger’s. Josie noted that Bruce and Marc werehired as research engineers and the research they are doing as a partof their jobs is also their dissertation research. Valerie said that in the physical sciences, most often students join funded research projects their advisors are engaged in. Students are responsible for carving out a specific area out of that project as their dissertation research. Sometimes one large project can lead to multiple dissertations and other times a dissertation can come out of multiple projects. She added that the graduate committee as a whole has very strict oversight of the entire Ph.D. process.
Josie said that the committee feels that given the appointment of new advisors, there is no conflict. She added that Bruce and Marc should not change advisors without consulting with this body. Toensure that Josie said that she would like to see the signature of Dr.Alam (as the advisor) on the annual review for both Bruce and Marc’sPh.D. programs.
GraduateCouncil voted in favor of accepting the recommendation of ARC thatthere is now no conflict of interest in the case of Bruce Brown andMarc Singer’s Ph.D. programs.
6. Policies and Regulations Committee:
Posthumous Awarding of Graduate Degrees: Lee said that Judith is working on a document for OU-COM students. The committee was having a lot of difficulty trying to accommodate their requirements with others. Leesaid that as the document currently stands, completion of a part of thedissertation or thesis is a requirement to qualify for the posthumousaward of a graduate degree. The specifics are for the departments to decide. Carolyn said that the criteria of admittance to candidacy seem minimalistic for their MFA programs. Sheclarified that students are only 33% done at the time they are admittedto candidacy, which is typically at the end of their first year. Carolyn proposed an amendment to the document. Shesuggested adding that MFA students need to have finished 75% of theircoursework/required hours, and have their thesis proposal approved.
GraduateCouncil voted in favor of accepting the proposal of awarding posthumousgraduate degrees with the inclusion of this amendment.
7. Planning and Strategy Committee:
Abrief discussion of the role of Graduate Council in a post “VisionOhio” university, yielded in members expressing their concern aboutover-centralization of administration and designation of graduatefaculty by a central office. Michael clarified that graduate faculty status will continue to be determined at the department level. He added that we need to ensure that faculty do not supervise degrees they do not hold themselves. Josie said that the document was uplifting and helped look at the macro image.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:05 pm.
Next meeting is on June 2, 2006 from 3 to 5 pm in the Governance Room at Walter Hall.
